An Update From Brad

After nearly two years of working on the Pastmapper project, I’m making an exciting career move. I have been given a great opportunity to join a company in San Francisco called Nextdoor. Nextdoor’s ambitious vision is to bring a sense of community to neighborhoods, and I’m inspired both by the talented team and the challenges in store. Many of the issues Nextdoor is tackling are directly related to the underlying goals of Pastmapper (understanding and connecting with place, fostering conversations, etc). I am really excited about the potential for the product, and couldn’t be more thrilled about the team. I can’t wait to start building great things.

Go check out the Nextdoor site. Chances are good that your neighborhood is already on board. If it isn’t set up yet, you can lead the way and start a site for your neighbors to join!

What’s Next for Pastmapper

So far, Pastmapper has been a great education in digital humanities and the state of historical mapping, software development, design, and data visualization. As a vehicle for displaying historical data, it has captured the attention and imagination of many passionate people, and has sparked conversations that I hope will continue.

I’ve met incredible people through Pastmapper too! Thanks to the project, I’ve gotten to know the great team at Doubledutch, who built the Pastmapper app, as well as Burrito Justice, Jeff Meyer, Jon Voss, Cathy Moran Hajo, Michal Migurski, Eric Fischer, Brian Mount, Brian Stokle, John Fox, John Christensen, Stephanie May, John Ridener, Dario Taraborelli, Tom Carden, plus countless brilliant people on Twitter who share brilliant work on maps, history, and visualizations. For those of you in San Francisco, the monthly #geobeers meetups will continue – just watch the @pastmapper Twitter feed for details.

I’m figuring out what Pastmapper can be while my attention is on Nextdoor. I’d love your input! If you’d like to help operate Pastmapper and/or take charge of integrating new content into the project, please send me an email. Or, as usual, reach out to me on Twitter (@pastmapper), where I’ll still be engaging from time to time in conversations about history and maps.

Cheers

Brad

PS — I’ve been working with a few people on some unreleased Pastmapper projects over the past few months. If you’re reading this, you may be one of the collaborators. If so, I’ll be in touch with you shortly about finding a way to get these projects finished or transferred.